Pinch valves are well known in the art. See, for example, my U.S. Pat. No. 3,982,724. Typically, such valve employs a collapsible tube which is pinched by a drive element against a fixed stop. The drive element may be actuated pneumatically or electrically in a reciprocating manner.
Of particular interest is the U.S. Pat. No. 3,511,469 to Bell. In this patent a deformable tube is placed between a pair of oppositely disposed plungers poised to normally pinch off the tube. The plungers are individually actuatable with separate solenoids to open the conduit.
In a number of high speed technologies a need exists for a high speed valve which is capable of conducting substantial fluid flows yet can be closed in a short instance for precision control. For example, in the printing of large surfaces, a need exists for a high speed valve which can be densely packaged with others and actuated using a relatively low amount of power to lay down an ink or dye pattern in an accurate manner.
For example, in the printing of a carpet a large number of valves may be necessary to print a dye pattern with an acceptable level of resolution. The number of valves can be extremely high if the printing requires deposition of dyes of desired colors on one-tenth inch centers over a total distance of the carpet width. When different dye colors are used, the number of valves for a single carpet printing may be of the order of thousands.